No the playable characters in combat are still 8 only (9 considering the player). The various Shiler, Cliff, etc even if they're present into the story don't take part into the combats. In practice, right now the idea is the same party as the first game but with Damien replacing Bellamy. Of course there might be occasional "guests" that fight for a few scenes, like Breza in Loren, but not stable members of the party.
I understand what you mean, while testing Loren it was a bit of a pain when I got a level up, but ultimately need to do what players want... Or simply have an autolevel option!

Personally, I'd rather have more control over how my character levels up.

Can't speak for anyone else, but a lot of the time when I'm playing RPGs I'll learn something outside my character class just to keep things interesting and develop a bit of personality for the PC. So for this game I'd have a Soldier who picks up a bit of psionics, or a Scout who's also good at charming people. That makes things a little harder since I'm working against my class bonuses, but I think it's worth it to add some spontaneity to things.

If you can only raise three specific skills at one time, either you've got all three focused on your class (which sucks if you like to color outside the lines, like I do) or you have skills that don't quite fit the basic build (which makes it hard to make a character that's both effective and original).

It wouldn't be a bad idea to add the actions or equipment permits, change them every level and let you buy one instead of spending a point on attributes, but telling a player they can't buy the attribute they want doesn't seem to like a great addition in an RPG.

... Hopefully that's what you were asking about and I didn't understand the whole thing.

Thanks for the opinion. Yes, that's why I proposed a sort of "middle-way" between Anima idea and the previous system. In the way I originally posted you can still customize your character, and every 2-3 levels or so get a "perk" or a bigger bonus that is tied to the Class. So you can "deviate" a bit from your Class "canon" advancement manually if you want.
I think Anima idea was perfect for a more casual RPG. Or I might just use two systems: either you pick skills manually or use his method, so it could also be an alternative interface for the user Will think about it more in the next weeks and any suggestion is welcome.

jack1974 wrote:So coder come up with an interesting idea, and after some careful thinking I found a way that could be integrated into the game level up system.
As you know (or maybe not, I don't remember anymore if I already posted about this), there are 12 skills, 4 x 3 areas of interests.
1) There are the Weapon Skills: Light Weapons, Heavy Weapons, Energy Weapons, Sniper Weapons
2) There are the Attribute Skills: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Psionic
3) And lastly, there are the Personal Skills: Charisma, Science, Medicine, Sabotage

I would call "Psionic" "Willpower" or "Mental power" in the attributes, and put "Charisma" as an attribute as well.

I would also separate "attributes" from "skills" completely and have the player determine the attributes upon character creation (and make them very hard to raise, i.e. by training only or as special quest rewards). And higher value of certain attributes would lead to higher value in certain skills (for example high Mental Power giving boost to medicine/sabotage, high dexterity giving boost to chance-to-hit and dodge, etc.).

As for character development, either manual skill insertion each level or character skill tree is fine by me (I've seen both in many RPGs); either character development system can be accompanied by choosing a perk every two or three levels.

abnaxus wrote:
I would call "Psionic" "Willpower" or "Mental power" in the attributes, and put "Charisma" as an attribute as well.

Hmm ok I guess Willpower or Mental power can work, even if I wanted to use Psionic since in the first game I used that. However a generic Willpower could be used in some quests/situations, and also determine that character skill in Psionics.
As for putting Charisma in the attributes is a bit more complex since I wanted to divide all the skills into 3 groups of 4 item each, so I could display them in the character screen in a "formatted" way

abnaxus wrote:
I would also separate "attributes" from "skills" completely and have the player determine the attributes upon character creation (and make them very hard to raise, i.e. by training only or as special quest rewards). And higher value of certain attributes would lead to higher value in certain skills (for example high Mental Power giving boost to medicine/sabotage, high dexterity giving boost to chance-to-hit and dodge, etc.).

Well in this case the distinction is just a name, but is not like in Loren that the 3 base attributes influenced other parameters. I'll have to think about this.

abnaxus wrote:
As for character development, either manual skill insertion each level or character skill tree is fine by me (I've seen both in many RPGs); either character development system can be accompanied by choosing a perk every two or three levels.

Thanks. So far I am more inclined in using manual skill assignment each level + choose a "perk" with the "choice tree" system that Anima suggested, I think that method would make both the "hardcore" and "casual" players happy.

Now that I think of it, the old SNES Shadowrun game was kinda similar in that it had 4 attributes (body, strength, magic and charisma) separate from skills, but they could be increased along with the skills (new skills could be learnt through certain NPCs in the game).

Ok just had an exchange with Anima (the coder) and thought to repost it here if people have any feedback / suggestions:

Anima wrote:There is something though that bothers me with the current skills. Four of our eight skills are weapon skills. The chance that only raising one of them per character is the best strategy is pretty high, maybe even certain. That leaves us with only 5 skills or in other words 125 empty points, if we have 90 points to distribute plus starting points...
If we add that some characters have no need for the Psionic skill, this gets down to 90 points for 100 possible. Actually some classes may even be able to max out those four skills since they have something like 10 starting points in these skills.
The end result would be very similar builds.
While we certainly could simply reduce the amount of points per level the problem with only 4 sensible skills per character remains.

A different option would be to include the other four skills into the combat skill total. But that has different repercussions. If we could make all these skills useful in combat as well as out of combat the problem would evaporate. But I'm not sure if that's realistically possible.

So in conclusion, I doubt that the current skill system will add much depth to the game, aside from creating the illusion of depth.

My reply was:

jack1974 wrote:Hmm I never thought about this, but you're right. I'll think in the next days if there could be another solution. I mean there will be the choice tree and some unique skills for each character, but still there should be more customization.
I see two ideas:
1) the choice tree will have some perks that require certain level. Like sharpshooter that will require sniper skill at 10 and so on.
2) I replace the weapon skill with generic fighting skills. So no more energy, light, heavy and sniper weapon but some skills like Accuracy, Reloading, etc (have to think better about it). Generic skills that can apply to various kind of weapons, so players could choose if to have a character that can use two pistols and fire faster, or just one but each shot be a critical hit, something like that. But of course won't be easy to design

So in next days will see if I can do something with the skills to make the game more varied and characters more customizable. Might be too hard though, but worth trying!
Actually the non-combat skill will have some impact in the combat (like medicine that increases the amount of HP healed using medikits) or in mission using them to bypass some fights like in previous game, but the point was that they should have much bigger impact. Anyway, is a bit too late so I'll just go to bed and think about it since I think I'm starting to write non sense

From where I'm standing, making all the skills useful in combat would be the neatest solution, IF you could pull it off.

Sabotage could be pretty easy to make combat-ready, since it covers grenades and mines. (... Right?) If you give characters access to more and more powerful grenades throughout the game, and give them all a minimum Sabotage score to use, that would almost make Sabotage a weapon skill in its own right. Weaker, probably, but that would make sense since it's also one of the problem-solving skills.

Medicine covers medikits, which is something but not quite enough to make it balanced. ... Maybe have Medicine give a passive HP Regen bonus while you're fighting? That way anyone with high levels of Medicine would be healing slowly whenever they fought.

That'd leave Charisma and Science, which... are a bit harder, oof. You could maybe use Science as a minimum on some of the more alien weapons in the game? (Not only do you need Heavy Weapons to use that Marada Swiss Army Knife, you also need Science to figure out how the thing works in the first place! ) Couldn't use that too often, since you wouldn't want to overshadow the weapon skills, but it could come into play sometimes. Or maybe you could research and build better weapons with the skill, but that gets away from actual combat a bit. Charisma could maybe give a passive bonus to the whole party, but that could get complicated in a hurry.

Another possibility... I don't know how well this would work, but I'll throw the idea on the table and see what you two think about it. If Charisma and Science are the only two skills in the game that you can't tie to combat in a big way, then you might even that out with colony building. Science logically could deal with a lot of the ways you get energy and resources, and Charisma logically could cover the actual running of the base in some ways. If that part of the game sometimes had problems crop up that needed a Science or Charisma check, and if a character told you at the beginning that would happen, it would go a long way toward making those two valuable even if they weren't really combat skills. You'd have to be careful on how you balanced that, but it'd be a possibility.

I dunno. Game balance isn't something I'm great at, but hopefully that's helpful in some way.

Foelhe wrote:
That'd leave Charisma and Science, which... are a bit harder, oof. You could maybe use Science as a minimum on some of the more alien weapons in the game? (Not only do you need Heavy Weapons to use that Marada Swiss Army Knife, you also need Science to figure out how the thing works in the first place! ) Couldn't use that too often, since you wouldn't want to overshadow the weapon skills, but it could come into play sometimes. Or maybe you could research and build better weapons with the skill, but that gets away from actual combat a bit. Charisma could maybe give a passive bonus to the whole party, but that could get complicated in a hurry.

Well for Science, if we have items that deteriorate over time with the use, it could influence how quickly that happens, or how easy you can repair them without going back to the base. But is not like every skill needs to be helpful on the combat now that I think about it, it could indirectly influence it. Since I'd like to have crafting, science could play a big role on the quality of the final items you produce. So in one way, it influences combat since better items=easier combat
Charisma could be used in various Rally/Taunt/Intimidate action during combat.

For colony sim I'd rather keep it a bit detached from skills, since I don't know if everyone will like it. So it's more an optional minigame, that if you want to play will give bonus to the RPG part, and not vice versa.

Well today will spend it thinking about a replacement for the four combat skills and also design the choice trees for the 4 base classes and then will see what comes out of it